Rumination in the Snow
by You'll Never Take Our Griffisu
Summary: Griffith/Guts UST. After Guts leaves, Griffith keeps himself from thinking about what that means. Or tries to, at least.


**Note: **Meant to put this up ages ago! Written for this past yuletide, and helped along immensely by my friends Ingrid, Tati, Meave, and Erin. I don't like writing fic that's all introspection and no dialogue, so this was pretty much like pulling blood from a stone. Still, I've always wanted an excuse to talk about where I think Griffith's head was at after Guts left, and this was a great opportunity to do exactly that! P.S. Sorry to anyone waiting on my other story - I promise I'm working on it. And another G/G thing! :)

Rumination in the Snow

Guts was just a man.

As the snow seeped in through Griffith's britches, chilling against his skin like the truth of that man disappearing over the horizon was chilling against his heart, he reminded himself of this fact, of what a very small thing Guts' leaving him (_hating him_) really was.

He still had so many other men, following him, believing in him, not requiring duels or any other sort of coercion to throw themselves in front of Griffith and beg, of their own volition, to be used, and he still had his castle, the vision that they'd all united behind. He still had his dream, unyielding and so within reach he could taste it; this was what mattered, this was _all_ that mattered.

Guts was just a man, so when Casca placed a trembling hand on Griffith's shoulder and beseeched him to come with her in out of the cold, he rose unsteadily to his feet and followed without a word, keeping his eyes fixed on the campsite and the trees and the vast white landscape in front of them. He did not turn around and look back the other way. He did not track the footsteps spiraling out in the snow behind him as far as they might lead. He did not squint backwards, off into the distance, to search for the outline of a soldier racing home to his commander's side. No, Griffith kept his gaze resolutely trained forward, for all that mattered was what lay ahead, and Guts was just a man.

When they returned to camp, Griffith warmed his hands over the fire and considered the path in front of him. He considered the steps remaining between him and the castle, and how strenuously careful he must be. He considered how many of his soldiers had been with him since the beginning and might actually survive to the end. He considered how close to that end he was. How close they all were.

He did not consider the steps he had already taken, the bodies piled beneath his feet, the soldiers who _hadn't_ survived. He did not consider the blood-stained path he had walked, the blood-stained hands he had used to shape the destiny of so many (dead) men, the blood-stained smile he would use to lure still more soldiers, more bodies, into his dream. These things weren't worth considering, for his men _chose_ to assemble behind him. They stood beside him and watched the body count rise with their eyes wide open, and every single one of them valued his dream more than they valued their lives, or they wouldn't stay. Guts - a mere man, a mere body - was simply proof of this.

In the nights that followed, Griffith fell asleep to thoughts of Princess Charlotte and her father. He thought of how pleasantly easy to manipulate they'd proven to be, of the universal malleability of humans that cut so conveniently across lines of class and nobility. He dreamt in the half-conscious moments before slumber of himself at the center of it all, standing above the weak-willed, acquiescent masses, holding the world in the palm of his hand, deserving it because he knew how to control rather than be controlled, because he understood the human heart - understood it so well he could play it like a lute - but was himself unaffected by its workings. This was what separated him from the royalty that fell so easily into power and would fall so easily out of it. This was what made him deserve the title he would one day earn, the influence he would gain over the world through having effortlessly and continuously influenced everyone he'd met in it from the day he was born. This was what made him greater than the great.

He determinedly did not think of the good people he had twisted and tempted and nurtured as allies and pawns, puppets and followers, but never, ever as friends, the strong, worthy people he kept close to his side but so coldly exiled from his heart. In order to be the indomitable man he was, the leader who was respected for refusing to ever, ever stop moving forward, it was critical for Griffith to view those who served him emotionally neutrally, as the capital - never comrades or equals - that they were. If they were killed on the battlefield, he could not let himself stop to mourn them as more than lost assets; this was an essential part of his inborn power, of what made him so singularly, single-mindedly ambitious. And in the bold, ruthless part of him that knew he deserved his fated kingdom more than any had before, in that dark, honest place within him where he'd easily acknowledge how much more worthwhile it was to be a deft manipulator than a kind or loving man, Griffith recognized how basic and natural all of this really was. After all, good, strong, and worthy they might be, but his soldiers _weren't_ his equals. The members of the Hawks let another man's wants dictate their own, let their will be subsumed beneath Griffith's aspirations, never trying to fight for their own dreams with any kind of fire, never even bothering to discern what these independent dreams might be: they'd surrendered to Griffith long ago. The expectation that he'd treat as friends men who spent all their time watching him from below was surely, surely a fallacious one.

Following these soothingly persuasive cogitations, Griffith even more determinedly did not think about how Guts was the exception to all his rules. He did not reflect upon how immediately and categorically attached he'd grown to the other man despite Guts's being no more ready to chase a dream of his own than any of the other Hawks - and how glad for this Griffith had been.

Griffith had never thought about this before - Guts had been his then, after all, and that was all that mattered - and he refused to think about it now. He refused to remember how unfamiliarly important it had been to him that Guts remain his to command, his to control, his to _own,_ the only property of his dream he'd ever fought for. Refused to dwell on how anomalously vital it had been to him, beyond even these things, to protect Guts' person and Guts' opinion of him. Refused to recall how regularly and thoughtlessly he'd had gone out of his way to ensure that Guts remain whole and that Guts remain devoted, and refused to accept how, of all things, his failure at this - at preserving Guts's approval - galled him to the core. Such thoughts were counter-productive, such sentiments weak and alien and useless, and Griffith would not let them touch him.

Especially because to consider that Guts, who was objectively no different than any other of his other soldiers, no more or less Griffith's equal, no more or less worthy of Griffith's attention, was capable of inspiring such an aberrant reaction in Griffith, was to consider that perhaps his men, all of them, had deserved more of his regard all along. Perhaps the reason he did not acknowledge them as more than tools was because he did not hunger for them the way he hungered for Guts, he did not have any motive to care about them beyond their practical value, but perhaps this did not mean they were objectively undeserving of his love or his concern.

He _could not_ consider this, for to accept that he was treating his men unequally, to accept that the way he valued Guts was the way all his soldiers deserved to be valued, was to accept that his dream mattered less than human life, was to impede his ability to continue truly believing in this dream. And he abjectly _refused_ to let Guts - one man, one gentle, herculean, beautiful, irreplaceable man - have this sort of power. Not Guts who'd left him so casually. Not Guts who wasn't there anymore.

Griffith could not think, _now_, of whether Guts mattered more than his dream, and what the implications of that could be. He could not could not could not, for Guts was gone, Guts was gone along with any pretensions of Griffith mattering to him the way Guts perhaps - if Griffith allowed himself to think about it, which he would not - mattered to Griffith, and all that was left, then, all that was left _to_ matter, was his castle in the sky.

So, after many of these nights of thinking and not thinking, it was with his need to push closer to the castle more urgent than it had ever been that Griffith found himself in front of Princess Charlotte's window. Guts might be more than just a man, but Griffith's dream was all he had now to hold onto, and so, as the rain fell down cold and hard upon him, Griffith steeled himself to remain just as cold, just as hard, just as he'd been before that man-and-maybe-something-more had ridden into his life. His clothing clinging icily to his tepid skin, Griffith pushed open the window, and pushed into the place where his dream would be reignited.


End file.
